adult swim

(S04E08) My heart is all aflutter. Talk about ending on a high note (Venture Bros. will return to finish the season in a few months, Lost-style). Just like "The Better Man," this Doc Hammer-penned episode was the perfect balance of great story and VB's signature comedy. There were so many great moments, quotable lines, and much-missed familiar faces, this quickly turned into one of my favorite episodes from any season, right up there with "Escape to the House of Mummies, Part II" and "Twenty Years to Midnight."

Those words, spoken by Master Shake, while recording his Christmas album with Meatwad, were intended to be a jab at consumers -- our Christmas album sucks but you won't figure that out until we have your money. On the contrary, the album (aptly titled "Have Yourself a Meaty Little Christmas") is an absolute goldmine of comical music hits for fans of the show.

However, last night's companion episode was anything but that. Paling in comparison to classic ATHF X-mas fare (like "Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past From the Future"), "A PE Christmas" could have truly captilized on the idea of Shake making Christmas music, but instead never took the idea far enough.

Adult Swim has been pretty mum on what to expect in this Sunday night's Aqua Teen Hunger Force Christmas special (it airs at 11:45 p.m. ET) but most speculation has suggested that it will have something to do with the recently released Aqua Teen Hunger Force Christmas album. Looks like that's the case based on the below video clip -- Master Shake and Meatwad are in the recording studio, trying their best to spice up a not-so-familiar holiday classic.

While the episode (it's entitled "A PE Christmas") kicks off the series' seventh season, we won't get any more new episodes until the beginning of February 2010. So take it all in while you can -- it's not everyday that you get to hear about Jesus, Krypton, The Wrath of Khan, and Ricardo Montalbán all in the same Christmas carol.

Yes, you read that right. Someone took the time to sit down and penetrate the delightful, twisted mind of actor/writer James Urbaniak from The Venture Brothers... in a bathtub.

It was part of comedian Sara Benincasa's web chat series "Gettin' Wet" in which noted humorists and comedians sit down to have a probing and in-depth discussion of their pathos and the process of artistic achievement and creation... in a tub. If you haven't figured out yet that this actually takes place in a literal bathtub filled with soapy water, then no one can really help at this point.

(S04E07) Wow. And wow again. Not only did we actually get closure on a few issues that had the potential to drag on forever (Archie and Betty/Veronica style), but we got one the best episodes of the season. I carefully considered whether my love for the Order of the Triad was making me a bit biased, but I honestly think this episode was a perfect example of advancing characters without sacrificing the comedy that made us fall in love with The Venture Bros. in the first place.

Also, they introduced the hottest VB lady yet, and I dare anyone to try and convince me otherwise.

It's the holiday season at Adult Swim, and its bizarre collection of Christmas specials mark the celebration starting tonight.

According to a network release, Robot Chicken gets the jingle bell rolling Dec. 6 at 11:45 p.m. ET/PT with Episode 71, "Dear Consumer." The show tunes in as "Thor celebrates Christmas in Asgard, and Santa adds 'Walter PPK' to the bad boy list.

The Aqua Teen Hunger Force Christmas Special premieres Sunday, Dec. 13 at 11:45 p.m. ET/PT -- sending The Aqua Teens out to record and release their own Christmas album -- after they steal someone's identity.

Another year, another Thanksgiving, and another Fall TV season with plenty of reasons to be thankful. Here's what's winning me over this holiday season...

FX's Sons of Anarchy -- Talk about a complete 180°. This show went from near the bottom of my list last season to one of the most superb dramas on TV right now. Midway through last year's up and down freshman season, I argued that that show had more to offer at a second glance, but for the most part, Kurt Sutter and his team were still finding their footing. Well, they found their footing and then some this year. Season two has been expertly plotted and executed this season and this past week's penultimate episode put the pieces in motion for a season finale that no TV fan should plan on missing.

This is the age of personalized entertainment on demand. It's also the age of talking wads of meat and animated fart jokes. Finally, all of that can now come together on your home DVD player.

Adult Swim fans can now go online and create a disc full of their favorite episodes from the channel's top shows with the Build Your Custom DVD tool.

For $20, you get 110 minutes worth of space to build a DVD. You can choose any of the available episodes from such series as Venture Brothers (right), Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sealab 2021. After arranging them in your preferred order, you give your DVD a name, description and cover art before paying for it and burning your unique creation.

(S04E06) This episode was a rare star-studded treat for Venture Bros. Really honing in on the idea of adult aftermath in the lives of boy adventurer types, Jackson Publick introduced a robot boy, boy detective brothers (Seth Green and John Hodgman), former Wonder Boy (Patton Oswalt) and the return of Action Johnny (Brendon Small). Never before have so many guest voices (okay, four) been crammed into an installment, bringing the entire audience to an immediate nerdgasm.

In true Adult Swim fashion, there's been absolutely no indication as to what this episode might be about, however it's likely that it somehow ties into the recently released Aqua Teen Hunger Force Christmas CD, Have Yourself a Meaty Little Christmas. If you haven't bought it yet, do yourself a favor and get it now. Trust me when I say that you haven't lived until you've heard Meatwad croon his own version of "Silent Night" or Carl cackle his way through "I'll Be Home for Christmas."

Anyway, regarding the episode, it's the only one listed on the schedule, so it's probably not the new season premiere, but it'll hopefully have some sort of performance aspect with songs from the album. That and maybe The Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future will show up. Please let the robot turkey be there.

Chris Elliott is quite possibly the most famous person few people have heard of. His early '90s sitcom Get A Life is a classic and he's had runs on TV shows like Late Night With David Letterman and Everybody Loves Raymond as well as some memorable movie cameos. And now he's in a new TV show.

It's called Eagleheart and it's about an over-the-hill action star who uses his television show of the same name "as a soapbox for his right-wing politics and conservative paranoia". He'll likely be more carictaure than character. Is the character based on Chuck Norris, I wonder?

It is produced by Conan O'Brien's production company. Conan actually co-created a pilot with similar themes (an over-the-hill star trying to remain relevant) in the early 90's called Lookwell starring Adam West.

It's got the right star and the concept certainly sounds amusing. But did it have to be Cartoon Network? Isn't the word "cartoon" in the network's title? Yet another example of channel drift.

(S04E05) This episode was certainly a surprise in many respects. It was one of the funnier installments of the season so far. It also brought back a lot of old themes and cleared up some incomplete storylines that had started to gather dust. On one hand, I'm glad that those have been resolved, because most of them were revealed to be kind of irrelevant anyway, but I also felt as though it was rushed, like, five loose ends from old major arcs had to be hastily tied up in twenty-some minutes. Well, it's better than continuing to string us along, right?

Director Stephen Sommers might want to discourage the production of animated lead-ups to his feature films. They keep outdoing the movies they're supposed to set up for audiences.

Before his Van Helsing reached theaters in 2004, Universal released Van Helsing: The London Assigment. Written by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, the animated half-hour was clever and action-packed. Van Helsing? It was not clever and action-packed.

Now, the DVD release of G.i. Joe: Resolute, an 11-episode series of animated shorts that originally aired on Adult Swim before the release of Rise of Cobra, brings a cooler and more visually compelling "Yo, Joe!" to screens.

On an Adult Swim schedule where every show is strange in some way, Xaviermay be the strangest of the bunch. The title character is a hairy birdman with a beak and legs with knees that bend the wrong way. And a snake hand. And a loincloth. And two different colored eyes. And six nipples (I could go on, but...) He talks like a surfer dude, mashing up new age double talk with double entendre, inhabiting a sort of alternate, SIMS-like earth and killing or damaging irreparably all he seeks to help.

The effect of this only intensifies when you watch a lot of episodes of Xavier in one sitting, which is what you can do with the new Xavier: Renegade Angel Seasons 1 and 2 DVD. In its usual dose of fifteen minutes per episode, it's odd. Watch it for two hours, you start to see spots. Even the animation, which stresses the bright colors and blocky movement of computer generated graphics, pushes you off kilter. It's an overused description to say something looks like a cartoon on acid, but if ever a show actually deserved the description, it's Xavier.

(S04E04) It's enough to make you stop believing when tears come fast and furious, in a town called Malice. Yeah. I totally just made that up. Right now. Free words of wisdom, from me to you.

This episode wasn't spectacular for the purposes of laughing-out-loud. It was funny in a few moments, yes, but I spent most of the twenty-some minutes resting my chin on my fist, brow furrowed with concern. All the characters are going through some heavy stuff right now, and that inner turmoil, dealing with loss and identity and love, came bubbling to the surface in this episode. Doing so, again, isn't much of a gut-buster, but it makes for beautiful character development. Can you tell I have faith in this show? Maybe a little too much.